My early math experiences

When asked about my memories of math, thoughts of difficult classes and negligent teachers filled my head. Of course these were thoughts from junior and senior high school where math becomes less fun and more about remembering formulas and facts. To dig deeper in my memory banks took a little more work but I was surprised of my own findings. There was a time when I truly loved math and looked forward to it. Of no surprise was that these memories were connected to my favorite teacher. I was lucky enough to spend my very early years in a small town. As with small towns the class sizes were small as a result. In my kindergarten class there were only eight of us, I know this because I still have a class photo that my grandmother saved. I can remember counting everything we did, saw and touched. Baking cookies in the school kitchen and each of us getting to measure and set timers. Shapes were in everything we saw. During art we used shape stamps to make pictures as well as looking at paintings and finding the shapes within them before trying to recreate them our selves. Math was fun because there was no "math time', it was all the time. We learned math with out realizing we were learning. Children learn through fun and play and the minuet we stop the fun we truly slow the learning process.